More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people.
TA-NEHISI COATESReparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
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I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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I did not know then that this is what life is – just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
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I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
TA-NEHISI COATES